So you wanna be a writer?

Scribblers and professional wordsmiths alike have been spewing out fountain pens full of praise for Screenplay Systems' new Dramatica Writer's Dream Kit - software to assist beginning to intermediate writers in the creation of short stories, novels and screenplays.I must admit, I greeted the offering with no small amount of skepticism. After all, stories - well, good ones anyway - are complex works of art, not loans to be amortized.

"But Dramatica focuses on the story as a problem to be solved," appealed Dream Kit co-creator Chris Huntley, in response to my semi-combative queries. "The program's main function is to ask questions which get you to think about your story from many different perpsectives."

Well, that sounded promising enough. I decided that this ambitious foray onto sacred ground couldn't be left unexplored - even if all I got out of it was the satisfaction of saying "Ha! I told you it wouldn't work!"

And so, armed with the program (which all fits onto a single floppy disk), the Story Guide, several ominous-looking worksheets and a flow chart that puts my grandmother's house cleaning schedule to shame, I dove in - and even lived to tell the story.

Contrary to its groove-with-it name, the Writer's Dream Kit approaches the art of story writing with the precision of an accountant, the thoroughness of the Oxford dictionary and the logic of Spock. It's also virtually incomprehensible without the manual.

"Dramatica presents the reader with a new language to get people to think about different aspects of a story, so there's a bit of a learning curve involved," warned Screenplay Systems' president, Stephen Greenfield.

I remembered his comment while attempting to decipher the following sentence: "Next, paraphrase the full description of your encoding for Objective Story signpost #1 in the space in the Plot Event area labelled 'Thumbnail.'"But, as I eventually discovered - and came to appreciate , its goal is to assist you in the generation of a "dramatic blueprint" of your story - a skeleton which should not be confused with the finished product.

By breaking the endeavor down into stages: Story forming, Story encoding and Story weaving; elements like plot, character and theme are addressed bit by bit and then woven together.

Key to the software's magic is a "Story Engine," which uses the initial decisions you make about your story to spit out a framework encompassing all the dramatic elements necessary to support your message. It's a lot like having a personal critic looking over your shoulder to say: "Hey, don't forget to think about this, and this."

Although there are initially 32,768 possible frameworks contained within the Story Engine, the number of options diminishes with every decision you make, until there's only one left with your story's name on it. I found this to be the most limiting aspect of the process: the engine's heavy emphasis on archetypal character clusters will, unfortunately, cast a slight-to-considerable pall over all but "classic" storytellers. Star Wars, for example, fits: Naked Lunch does not.

My other beef: There aren't really any shortcuts - it's an all or nothing approach. And, believe me, no stone is left unturned. This makes Dramatica's Dreamkit less appropriate for short fiction than for novels or screenplays.

That aside, I'd have to say skepticism gave way to admiration by the time I'd finished. Structure is often the last people think about when writing, when for impact and sanity's sake it should be the first.

As Greenfield pointed out: "There are lots of ways we can analyze stories. People with PhD's sit around and do it all the time. But it's still very difficult to talk about creating them."It's a difficult topic, but Writer's Dream Kit provides valuable insight into what needs to take place behind the sentences - and the scenes - of a story.

Dramatica Writer's Dreamkit retails for $99.95 &shyp; $149.95 US and is available for both Windows (3.1 or better) and Macintosh operating systems (system 7 or better). It requires a minimum of four MB of RAM and seven MB of free hard disk space.

Contact Screenplay Systems at their website: (http://www.dramatica.com) or call them in Burbank, Calif. (1-800-4-story).